Year: 2015

From the continued ripple effect resulting from Edward Snowden’s leak of NSA surveillance programs, to increased reporting stemming from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, whistleblowing is a hot topic. A recent article in Corporate Counsel, Lawyers on All Sides See Whistleblowing Evolving Fast, explains the changing whistleblowing landscape. For one, the sheer number of whistleblowers has exploded. Take Dodd-Frank for example; according to a SEC report, in 2011 there were 334 tips compared with 3,620 in 2014. Secondly, the awards are getting bigger, with one recent payout amounting to an impressive $30 million. With statistics like these, companies have to be prepared.

Is your organization prepared?

Do you currently have an internal or external reporting policy or program? Even well-intentioned companies with reporting systems in place, haven’t quite found the right balance between encouraging reporting, protecting employees who come forward and protecting the company interests over time. A recent article in the Journal of Accountancy, Are Organizations Hindering Employee Whistleblowing?, discusses this phenomenon:

“Companies that maximize their employees’ willingness to report fraud in-house position themselves to learn about problems before they become bigger issues – and before employees feel the need to report them outside the organization.”

The article also references a 2009 study published in Auditing: Practice & Theory, that found that employees are more hesitant to report possible fraud to outsiders as opposed to using internal company reporting programs. In addition, employees are much more willing to report if they can do so anonymously.

Onit can help.

The Onit Whistleblower App enables you to customize an internal reporting & case management system for your organization’s needs. Using simple reporting forms, employees can anonymously report issues into a single repository, giving management visibility into potential problems that might otherwise go unnoticed or unreported. The larger benefit to the company, of course, is that by getting early insight into exposed risk, management can start internal investigations and address the issue before it becomes a much larger problem. As with other Onit solutions, the Whistleblower App allows for a collaborative workspace, enhanced visibility into cases, and supports compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.  Affordable, intuitive and easy to use, Onit’s Whistleblower App can help you effectively manage your organization’s risk and exposure in a way that encourages employee reporting in a protected environment.

Click here to learn more about our Whistleblower App. Contact us to find out how Onit Apps can help streamline any number of your business processes.

Resolution: Change
Where is your organization headed in 2015?

It’s that time of year again, where we take stock of what happened over the past year, both the good and the bad, and declare our hopes for 2015. What are the things you’d like your business to accomplish next year? What changes or improvements are necessary to bring this about? Taking stock of where your business is today, how can you evolve to meet the demands of digital business next year and beyond?

First, we think it’s helpful to look at the trajectory of technology and digital business. It serves as a reminder that the world is changing around us, whether we like it or not. Looking at these trends also reminds us that we are in this boat together, so let’s learn from each other and grow together. Working with our clients over the past few years, we’ve observed that technology as a business tool has fundamentally changed, so has the role of IT. The move towards customer-driven solutions, and away from large-scale systems of record has had far-reaching consequences. The way our customers research vendors and buy products now is accomplished largely outside of a direct human-human sales context.

Gartner’s recent predictions for 2015 and beyond tell a similar story. In their list of Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2015, analytics will play a huge role in critical app functionality. However, it’s not enough to have access to big data, instead “we’ll need big questions and big answers,” in order to put those analytics to work. Also on the list are Cloud/Client Architecture (centrally coordinated apps that can be delivered to any device) and Software-Defined Infrastructure and Apps. Of the latter, Gartner says, “computing will have to move away from static models to deal with the changing demands of digital business.” With regards to who is engaging the new technology, Gartner found that almost 38% of technology spending is happening outside of IT, signaling “a shift of demand and control away from IT and towards business units closer to the customer.” (Gil Press, Forbes). This is something we see at Onit all the time, given that most of our buyers are from legal or sales departments.

For the first time, Gartner predicts that technology through connected devices will improve our overall health. Technology is better responding to the needs of consumers and is providing incredibly useful tools to manage our health and to reduce the amount of mundane processes we go through to get information or to accomplish our objective. As mobile technology will impact our individual health and efficiency, Onit believes that nimble app-centric solutions will impact our businesses’ health for the better. By removing or improving the tactical processes that impede or delay progress, these apps can drive department efficiency and reduce risk, impacting both employee’s job satisfaction and the bottom line.

Evolution is a necessity for business survival, but you needn’t scrap your existing systems and start over. We have found that meaningful change can come from some of the smallest, projects or processes. Our customers have developed apps for everything from contract administration to whistleblowing, to vendor management and sales enablement and have seen tremendous success.

So, what are your improvement goals for 2015? Onit can help. Contact our team, and check out our new whitepaper, Your First Enterprise App: 6 Steps to Successfully Implement Change in Your Organization.

Sources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2014/10/09/gartner-predicts-top-trends-for-technology-it-organizations-and-consumers-for-2015-and-beyond/

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/fgjd45eldm/4-advanced-pervasive-invisible-analytics-2/